“Outdoors With George” October 23, 2008

George Bayless
International Representative, IGFA
Member of National Freshwater Fishing Hall of Famewww.rgmoutdoors.com

This week I am talking about sporting lead.

This is an excerpt from a government agency from 1988. Lead poisoning remains the most common and socially devastating environmental disease of young children. Millions of U.S. children from all geographic areas and socioeconomic strata have blood lead levels high enough to be associated with adverse health effects. Poor, minority children in the inner cites, who are often already disadvantaged by inadequate nutrition and other factors, are particularly vulnerable to this disease. The pervasiveness of childhood lead poisoning as well described in the nature and Extent of Childhood Lead Poisoning in Children in the United States: a Report to Congress, prepared by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR, 1988)

Now let’s look at USA Today of May 28, 2008. The lead to the story was “Lead Exposure linked to later Crime”. Researchers have collected data from as early as 1979 when pregnant women and their healthy babies had their blood drawn regularly at four Cincinnati medical clinics. By the time the children were 7, Researchers had a complete portrait of lead levels. Now nearly two decades later the researchers tracked down 250 of the subjects, ages 19-24. Controlling for a host of factors, including parental IQ, education, income and drug uses, the team found that the more lead in a child’s blood from birth through age 7, the more likely he or she was to be arrested as an adult. The tie between high lead levels and violent crime was particularly strong.

Many researchers believe that we could have an average increase of 10 points IQ in all levels of society if lead had been controlled.

This entry was posted
on Tuesday, January 27th, 2009 and is filed under Telegraph Feature Articles.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.